Excerpt from Literary Hearthstones of Dixie The fires still glow upon the hearth stones to which our southern writers in the olden days gave us friendly welcome. They are as bright to-day as when, four feet on the fender we talked with some gifted friend whose pen, dipped in the heart's blood of life, gave word to thoughts which had flamed within us and sought vainly to escape the walls of our being that they might go out to the world and fulfil their mission They who built the shrines be fore which we offer our devotion have passed from the world of men, but the fires they kindled yet burn with fadeless light. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.